IN a dash to get home before dark, l found myself amid a hurly-burly at the bus terminus.
This drew my attention and made me pretermit my search for a commuter omnibus to get me home.
The journalist in me and the nose for news got me sniffing. As a cub reporter , I needed to prove to my seniors that the lioness in me was already roaring.
I gathered my courage to get closer to the heat despite the fact that my colleague pint sized Fani Mapfumo sustained a fractured hand after being assaulted by police in the line of duty on August 16 illegal protests.
Thank God he is having a speedy recovery!
As l was walking towards the source of the drama, l realized that it was a rank marshal who could not have been over 18 years and was engrossed in a hot heated argument with a commuter old enough to be his grandmother.
When l got a closer look at the rank marshal who was being called Biggy by his fellows, it then struck me that he might have been high on drugs like the many others who cheered him on.
Where is the Ubuntu, I asked myself withholding tears from rolling down my cheeks.
Judging by his deadly red eyes and bulging veins that threaten to rip open his bleached skin he was days away from being sober.
The witnesses of the squabble confirmed my suspicion when they mentioned that Biggy actually sold broncleer, a cough syrup now abused by youthful users to get lofty.
The youths try to create Utopia and escape the harsh realities of life through taking drugs.
The drugs have become expensive and funding the habit has caused an increase in crime rate and the creative youths are taking anything that gets them high including the popular ‘mutoriro’, I gathered after befriending a street kid next to me.
I made it a mission to learn more about the drugs making rounds in the streets which made these youths go wild.
On my quest l comprehended that in our country’s economic hardship everybody is striving for a better life forcing some to sell drugs that should be sold with prescriptions as well as many others already banned as they are illegal.
The virus and heavy dependens on drugs has not only seized the unemployed youths but the suited mature corporates as well.
The list of the abused drugs causing most of the rowdiness was endless but on top of the chart, the ‘giggle blossom’, well known as mbanje and the histalix get the best accolades.
Mutoriro is however the most popular!
In desperation for a sting of hallucinations to transport them from their misery, the youthful ones who roam around the capital are also inhaling glue in their scheme to provide themselves some escapism.
On the drug black market they are instilling the idea of the ‘perfect body’ in ladies making them use drugs like the famous apetito cyproheptadine tablet to get wider hips and voluptuous behinds.
But these tablets are meant for boosting appetite but when abused might have side effects that include vomiting, diarrhoea, rash and hives.
Regardless of the negatives caused by this illegal trade of drugs, the common struggling man has found reprieve as medical drugs which would have been smuggled in the country are sold cheaper at this market than in the registered pharmacies.
These drug dealers have become both a curse and a blessing to society, I did in fact go home feeling a lot better after I purchased 10 ibuprofen pills for RTGS$10 to nurse my headache, two bucks cheaper than in the pharmacy.
My heart however bleeds for my beloved country, most of these drug users are unemployed university graduates and some of the ‘manufacturers’ of these home made drugs in fact studied Chemistry and Pharmacy at university level.
